First person always felt like it made shooting/aiming feel better to me, it strikes me as a pre-over-the-shoulder solution to fine aim, which worked well enough for the time but is pretty much obsolete now. There's still some novelty to playing TPS games in first person, but not really any practical use for Hitman to have it at this point.

Any kind of preorder will get you a beta key. I bought the intro pack, seems pretty fair at 13 bucks., dunno if there's any kind of giveaway going on.
Game's pretty good, I think they nailed the blood money feel, even in the tutorial levels. Doing every challenge is probably gonna take me a couple of days.
Gotta say, I was really disappointed with Absolution, but at this point I'm feeling tempted to preorder the full experience just to get that dumb rubber ducky.

I can't play because it's CONSTANTLY spamming me that it can't save the game (like a PS2 missing the memory card) and when I say not to retry it goes ahead and retries anyway. It's drat near unplayable and Googling it and checking the Steam forums make it seem like I am the absolute only person having this issue. Restarting it let me play the guided tutorial but on the second one where it's open I got the same issue. Really frustrating bug.

Apparently restarting it five times is all that it needed to FINALLY work.

Dark_Swordmaster fucked around with this message at Feb 20, 2016 around 02:26

Any kind of preorder will get you a beta key. I bought the intro pack, seems pretty fair at 13 bucks., dunno if there's any kind of giveaway going on.
Game's pretty good, I think they nailed the blood money feel, even in the tutorial levels. Doing every challenge is probably gonna take me a couple of days.
Gotta say, I was really disappointed with Absolution, but at this point I'm feeling tempted to preorder the full experience just to get that dumb rubber ducky.

The Intro Pack preorder also includes the Requiem Pack with the rubber duck, so you don't need the full version to get it.

getting flashbacks to high school and playing the blood money demo over and over again trying to wring every last bit of fun out of that tutorial mission to abate the anticipation for the game's release which was nearly ten years ago now gently caress

What's kinda awesome(and abusable) is that the security just escorts you out for trespassing. Of course, this makes it kinda easy to off a guard by having him escort you to a secluded spot and killing him there but still.

What's kinda awesome(and abusable) is that the security just escorts you out for trespassing. Of course, this makes it kinda easy to off a guard by having him escort you to a secluded spot and killing him there but still.

Yeah, the being arrested thing could be OP as gently caress. It's basically an exit the mission free card if you already got the target and the body wasn't found yet. Hopefully you can only get arrested once or at a minimum it locks you out of Silent Assassin.

Even the proportions of the player/NPC models seem to have been adjusted to feel more like Blood Money. It also seems to me like the graphics are less "gritty" than Absolution and more clean like Blood Money (which I love), but it's hard to tell for sure given that both beta missions are not "legitimate" locations and are slapped together with chipboard.

It really does feel like blood Money, though. I'm not saying it's all rosy though, since the game isn't out, but the beta is BM2.0 like some have said. The devs have definitely made an effort to make it feel similar to Blood Money and have succeeded, in my opinion. BM is one of my favourite games of all time (and I cancelled my pre-order for Absolution as the gameplay videos started to leak, if that adds to my cred) and I feel as comfortable exploring and experimenting in the beta for Hitman as I did in Blood Money. Maybe more so, with the cover mechanics. Given you can add/disable all sorts of other poo poo like minimap/hotspots/instinct, it seems like this is a good package, enabling hardcore and casual fans alike to have a good time. If they deliver on the unique contracts and keep supporting the game, this could be really special.

I won't tell anyone what to do with their money, but I would say it's definitely worth the minimum buy-in of $15, unless these beta missions are a complete misdirection, which I think is pretty unlikely.

Mr Scumbag fucked around with this message at Feb 20, 2016 around 17:49

Did my usual Hitman thing of killing everyone I could stealthily on the freeform ship. Got about a dozen bodies before people started freaking out. The thing is, the crowds aren't real people (you can't tell because they don't have dots on the minimap and they aren't highlighted in instinct) so when I shot a few people on one of the outside stairs and they slid to the deck with the party only the "real" NPCs freaked out. The party just kept going even with a dead body right next to it and a handful of people running around freaking out. Either way, everything else seems incredibly on point and I'm going to be playing around today to see just how much I can go HUDless/hintless.

This is fantastic - my only complaint is some events not happening until you're there to witness them. I'm having to play it on the lowest settings imaginable because my graphics card is terrible and I'm still having literally hours of fun with two tiny maps. I've been compiling videos of all the different ways I've completed the second mission, if anyone needs convincing of its non-linearity. Hopefully I'll have a proper graphics card by the time the first episode is out.

The Intro Pack preorder also includes the Requiem Pack with the rubber duck, so you don't need the full version to get it.

That's good to know, thanks.

I just completed all the challenges for the beta and I really enjoyed myself. If they can keep us provided with targets to hunt down I'll probably be more than ok with the episodic release format they've chosen.
Then again, I really liked this kind of format with Resident Evil Revelations 2, but that game had new episodes coming out every 2 weeks (I think?) rather than monthly.

I think I'm gonna reinstall Blood Money (again) to tide me over until release. Also, Hitman Go is coming out on steam on the 23rd, I might pick that up as well, I heard good things about it.

Yeah, I can totally get dude-from-RPS' complaint about things ONLY happening when you trigger them and then going on a loop, but that could just be the bits we've seen. The old Hitman games had EXACTLY that in addition to the levels moving on a set timeframe.

Yeah, I can totally get dude-from-RPS' complaint about things ONLY happening when you trigger them and then going on a loop, but that could just be the bits we've seen. The old Hitman games had EXACTLY that in addition to the levels moving on a set timeframe.

They did not. The only things that did that were things where the event was because you were doing something, particularly speaking to an Agency contact.

Well alright, they had that in so much as "You need to do this to start the loop." But it was still present, just nowhere NEAR as aggressive.

e: Also I tried playing without most of the HUD elements off and the mechanics rely on them almost too heavily to do that. Without the suspicion indicator and the dots over NPC heads you can EASILY get caught without knowing who did it. Losing instinct isn't a huge deal but losing it and the minimap means doors are a loving crapshoot since you can no longer look through keyholes. I don't mind using the HUD as it's relatively unobtrusive but the dream of playing Pro without a HUD is a lot more distant this time around.

Dark_Swordmaster fucked around with this message at Feb 20, 2016 around 22:20

Jesus christ Squre Enix's store is lovely, but it's the only place to buy the drat Collector's Edition for PC.

If anyone is looking to buy the full game on PS4 or Xbox and wants to be my best friend: I'll buy the CE for whatever platform, you buy the PC digital download, and we swap codes. I'll even send you the stupid red tie in the mail if you want.

Beta's gameplay slice played well enough to get me interested in the final product. Far as problems not being mentioned much the controls could do with another pass: silently knockout/subque being the same button leads to issues, yet keyboard controls have an overenthusiastic button-per-action plan.

One new addition that I really like is the Absolution-style running up to knock somebody out once you're spotted. Blood Money had that too to some extent, but usually it was to break somebody's nose and take their weapon, and that was after they'd gotten shots off and alerted the whole map. Here, your cover isn't totally blown if you're seen doing something, you can just run up to the witness to knock them out provided it's not in a room full of other witnesses.

On the first training map I tried throwing a fire extinguisher at the Deck 0 cop's head, unfortunately I missed so he turned around to get suspicious at me. So I ran up and QTed his lights out, but a worker in the hall heard it so he ran in to investigate. When he saw me, I sprinted up to him and hit him in the jaw and knocked him out in one punch. About that time, a crew member came down from upstairs to check out the commotion, and I turned on him and punched him in the gut to knock him out. Then it was just a matter of picking which disguise I wanted and stowing all three of them in the convenient lockers nearby.

They did not. The only things that did that were things where the event was because you were doing something, particularly speaking to an Agency contact.

Blood Money had a few unobtrusive ones. The one that stands out to me is the two people talking about the "new doctor" in the asylum who don't start talking/go on their route until you open the front door or alert them otherwise.

Worse-but-more-fun example: The door on the cruiseliner that makes a dude shout "Waiter!" that you can just keep opening/running through to make him constantly shout the same line forever.

That said, they barely affected the game's AI routes and light ecosystem, whereas here, it's painfully obvious that any NPC that's there to REVEAL OPPORTUNITIES is just standing directly on their mark doing absolutely nothing until the player gets within a safe range to REVEAL OPPORTUNITIES. I was kinda hoping that the prompt meant they'd try to make eavesdropping more natural, but it's just the same hokey overused system from Absolution being presented with an extra UI element.

I get why they want to make it that way, but they could reveal a lot of that info more naturally, even if it was just setting those NPCs on a timer so they aren't standing completely still until the end of time if you never trigger their scripts. That's not a great or even good solution, but it's a start.

Good Hitman levels were about planning a way through a level that doesn't revolve around the player and just does its own thing until the player interferes, this is already feeling like it's more about planning your way through the script triggers, which is way less engaging. The second mission felt like a slightly bigger Absolution level with a better disguise mechanic, which isn't bad, it's just not Blood Money 2.

I honestly like everything else about the game, it's just that one element that has me really drat worried for the game's future level design.

Good Hitman levels were about planning a way through a level that doesn't revolve around the player and just does its own thing until the player interferes, this is already feeling like it's more about planning your way through the script triggers, which is way less engaging. The second mission felt like a slightly bigger Absolution level with a better disguise mechanic, which isn't bad, it's just not Blood Money 2.

I honestly like everything else about the game, it's just that one element that has me really drat worried for the game's future level design.

I've got similar misgivings, but I'm hopeful that the painfully telegraphed and heavily scripted opportunities on offer are more due to the beta being comprised of introductory/tutorial chapters than anything else. I'm hoping the actual meat of the game'll introduce these things more organically. I'm also hoping that they make some optimisations so that it doesn't chug like poo poo on my system, but we'll just have to see.

It's not the UI element that bugs me, it's the actual game design behind it. There's no way to turn off the AI's "wait for player to be in range, then activate" scripting, just the HUD element that informs you that that's a thing that's happening.

Honestly, that UI could be used for good, if you could catch an NPC mid-conversation or be informed that there's some important discussin' going on at some other part of the map, it'd be a good helper for new players that aren't used to the pacing of that kind of Hitman level. As it stands, though, it's just a big "hey dummy this part is designed to make you "overhear" important info" indicator.

I'd imagine it can't all be scripted events if there are going to be randomized targets for events and community targets in Contracts mode. That or IO really haven't thought things out.

What I'm thinking (and hoping) is that the initial "story" version of each mission will have all the dialogue and scripted events and all that, then there will be an extra version of the map that pares down the scripting and dialogue in favour of accommodating the more sanbox-y objectives/challenges/contracts.

I'm assuming it's one map with several assassinations on it. Seems like more content than MGS Ground Zeroes. At half the cost.

Eh, comparing anything to GZ isn't a super great omen, considering that the hideous overpricing of that was the first major hint that people (outside of uh, insiders) got at what Konami was going to become, and Square Enix is already going down a very similar path in a very similar way.

That said, 15 bucks is the closest i've seen any of these dubious AAA """starter packs""" come to being decently priced, and if they actually keep up support for its live stuff, it could be a genuinely decent little thing. I'm still immensely wary of the business model and the people who want to use it, but this specific use of it seems like it could be okay.

Either way, it'll be really fun to read the Steam reviews on launch day, so that's something.